Game: Grand Theft Auto: China Town Wars

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Grand Theft Auto: China Town Wars is the first in the GTA franchise to go onto the Nintendo DS, obviously with the graphic capabilities no one is expecting GTA IV. But the game that Rockstar North have created does include some of the great elements of GTA games in the past that make them great. The game is a top down view game similar to the GTA I, II, and III.

But as you can see in the photo below it is slightly tilted so that you can see the sides of buildings and cars, making it seem more 3d, and when you flip a car you can see that the game objects are built to be 3D. They also used a comic style way of displaying everything by putting black lines around everything to help show the outline of objects and give the game a more comical fell which works extremely well. The storyline has gone back to its original GTA roots, with the jokes and sleazy and idiotic banter, they are using basic still shot images and subtitles instead of audio to save space as can be seen further down the page in a chat between Chung and Detective Hesson.

Apart from that the game is exactly what i wanted GTA IV to be, it included all the missing part that GTA fans are use to from GTA Vice City, with the ability to buy safe houses, with actual garages, there are choppers used in the game but you are not able to fly them yourself. The return of the Hidden packages, and the Rampages, and new mini games using the stylus control, such are hot wiring cars and putting together sniper rifles before the kill (see below). The cars in the game are ranged and very similar in driving style to IV, (the duke is still really powerful and hard to keep in a straight line).

The map has removed the 3rd island, but you don't even notice that it is gone, because the two islands are enough to still keep you lost for ages. The inclusion of the ability to trade drugs within the game was very well thought out, as a trading mechanic to allow the user to make extra money, but parents should be wary as the drugs still have their real street names, something that you think may have been picked up by sensors after they made Fallout 3 remove the names of their drugs before it passed censorship.


All in all an excellent DS game, with a humorous 6 hour long storyline, with many hours of hidden packages, buying houses trading drugs, stealing gang vans, racing bikes/cars/go Karts etc, for any enthusiastic GTA fan who also owns a DS.

Docfox01 Signing Out.

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars
(An excellent example of the power of the DS)